A/N: A follow-up to the 1987 film "Best Seller".

Credit where Credit is Due

Dennis Meechum came down the carpeted stairs of his home slowly. It was night and it should have been quiet, but something woke him up. It was quiet and dark; just what you'd expect at 3am on a Sunday. As he crept through the house, he gripped the .38 in his hand - as an ex-cop he smart was enough to know that sometimes instincts were right, while the part of him that was a writer of fiction and non-fiction knew that your imagination wasn't always wrong.

His ears picked up a slight creak from the front part of the house and he trained his senses in that direction. There was a little more light coming from the room than there should be and his brain ran through the possibilities of a source; his girlfriend and agent Roberta Gillian wasn't staying over that night and his late wife was good enough not to haunt the house that he refused to move out of for sentimental reasons. The corporate assassin Cleveland Morris was dead, although he hadn't been a threat to Dennis even when he was alive. Cleve needed Dennis to pen the book that would become a best seller, a tell-all of his employer David Madlock's rise to power with his organization and the tangled web of power, money and influence it wielded. "Retribution: The Fall of David Madlock and Kappa International" was a monster hit and spelled the end of Madlock's reign of corruption; Dennis was smart enough to know that there were others out there, but at least one of the big players was out of the game. He had barely been able to publish the book - there were those that were still afraid of being retaliated against for putting out such an expose, but the court case only confirmed the public's opinion of the guilt of the man, and every appeal had seen a similar loss.

He poked his head around the corner and looked into the living room. His eyes swept the room, ruling out everything else except the source of the faint noise. His daughter Holly sat on the sofa, her back to him; he put his gun down, put the safety on and cleared his throat to announce his presence. Holly turned around; in the dim light he could see she hadn't been crying, but she didn't look very rested either. "Hi, Daddy. I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"No Honey, I had to get up anyway. Old man's bladder, you know," he lied. The truth was he DID have to pee, but it was from the nerves sneaking around the house rather than too much coffee. He walked around the end of the sofa and sat beside his only child, now seventeen. He put his arm around her and gave her a big squeeze. "Couldn't sleep again?"

"Yeah," she confessed. It wasn't the first time in the fourteen months since her father had arrested Madlock after being shot by him. The nightmares were becoming less frequent, but they still happened.

"All that is over, now. It won't undo what you saw, but the violence will fade some over time. It's already better than right after it happened, isn't it?"

"Some."

"See? I'm sorry you couldn't have a normal life like before, but I promise it will get better. I'm retired from the force now, so I won't be getting involved in that kind of stuff again. Cleve had some additional material in his scrapbook he left me that is a guarantee against something happening."

Holly turned to look at her father. "Was Cleve a hero?"

"What?" Dennis sat back and rubbed his forehead with his other hand. "Why can't you ask something easy, like 'what do boys want' or something?"

"Come on Dad, it's important. He's part of my nightmares too, you know."

"I don't doubt it." It was perfectly understandable; Cleve had helped protect Dennis' daughter when one of Madlock's goons came to the house looking for the manuscript for the unfinished book. He had taken care of the man, and then sent Holly off to Roberta for safe keeping. Madlock had still managed to snatch her with the help of a couple of corrupt cops, and took her to his mansion on Topanga Beach where he invited Dennis for a 'friendly' chat while making it absolutely certain that his life and hers would be in danger if the book was ever published. Unknown by Dennis - although he suspected as much - Cleve had infiltrated the compound and eliminated some of the gunmen patrolling the area, including the one holding Holly in a room. It finally came down to a shootout between Dennis, Madlock and Cleve. Taking Holly as a human shield, Madlock threatened her unless their guns were dropped. Dennis, already wounded, dropped his and Cleve tossed his, telling Madlock he was defenseless. Madlock shot Cleve multiple times, but Dennis managed to cuff and arrest him afterward before Cleve died in his hands. "What do you think?" he asked his daughter.

"You didn't call him one in your book. He was always very nice to me, but Mr. Madlock was too before you got there. He might have saved my life in this house, and he definitely saved my life in that mansion."

"He wouldn't have had to save your life there if you hadn't run right to Madlock, you know."

"Daddy," she chided. "I already told you that I was running to you. He just got me first."

"A shootout is no place to be running toward anything, unless it's an exit."

"Sorry, it's the first one I've been in."

"Yeah. Last one, I hope," he said as he tousled her hair. "Do you think he was a hero?"

"I don't know. I think of a hero like Superman, or maybe a fireman. Cleve did save my life, but I saw him kill a man too. He said to look away, but I couldn't. He just said 'Sorry' and killed the man. He didn't act like a hero right then."

"I tell you Sweetie - he wanted to be a hero. He killed so many people that I don't even know if he could count them all. I still don't know how he did it - I've killed a man, but it was in self-defense. He killed them because it was what his boss needed; just a job, like pulling out weeds in a garden. I don't know if he felt much at all; he certainly wasn't like his family in Oregon when I met them. He knew they wouldn't believe my book when it came out, and sure enough there they were on the news saying what a nice boy he was; everyone saying how respectful and kind he had been, and I must be making it up. But I got a little private note that was sent to my publisher from his mother - she knew something was wrong with him, but never pressured him about it. I think he was just kind of empty inside; he knew what were the right things to do even if he didn't feel it. He wanted to get even with Madlock for getting kicked out when he asked to be respected; through all that, I never saw him go into a rage or do anything that wasn't planned or calculated."

"So you're saying he didn't sacrifice himself for me?"

"No Honey, he did. What I'm saying is I think that he knew what had happened, what the situation was, and figured the only way to really get Madlock and save you and me was to offer himself instead. I watched the man on the firing range - he could have picked Madlock off from where he was standing without hitting you. But I'm pretty sure he thought about it and figured out that to really hurt Madlock, the man had to live to have everything taken from him."

"But doing something brave on purpose is being a hero. No one says that heroes are perfect," Holly suggested.

"No one is perfect, hero or otherwise. We all fail sometimes." Dennis briefly flashed back to the death of his wife from cancer. Nothing he did stopped that from happening. "It's what makes us human, I guess."

"And what if you do something heroic on accident?"

"Nothing Cleve did was by accident. But if someone did..." Dennis thought, drifting off in thought for a moment, "...if they didn't know the act was dangerous, then I'd say no. If I walked through a dark room to a lighted door on the other side to reach someone, that's normal. If I knew there were hungry tigers waiting in the dark to pounce on me and I still did it, that's brave."

"And if you know it's dangerous but you don't feel scared, does that make a difference?" she asked.

"Are you taking a philosophy class? Is that what this is?"

"No. Like I said, it's just important to me. I want to know."

"Well...in that case I would still say yes," he said hesitantly. "That person has done something heroic, and they knew there was danger. Different people have different fears, like spiders and heights and things. But danger is danger - it means you're putting yourself at risk when you don't have to do it."

"Thank you, Daddy. You answered my question then. Cleve was a hero."

"I didn't say that."

"Yes you did. He did something heroic on purpose," she said as she ticked off her fingers. "There was no way for him to be perfect. He knew there was danger in doing it. You said whether he felt scared or anything at all wasn't important. That makes him a hero. They tell us in school to always give credit on our work."

"Huh," Dennis said. "Maybe he was. Hanging out with people who don't care can make you start to not care too. Maybe it works the other way around - maybe he did feel like he was doing something good after being around us. God, I'd like to think that."

"I think so," she said with finality. "Maybe you can think so, too."

"I think...it's too late to try and go back to sleep now. What do you say I make us some runny eggs and burnt bacon for breakfast? Maybe the sun will come up just for us."

"I'll make the toast, and I'll let you ruin the eggs and bacon," she said as she jumped up and kissed her father on the forehead before looking him in the eyes. "Were you going to pull the trigger on Madlock at the end?" Dennis had held his gun to the man's head, but didn't kill him.

"I don't know; I really don't know. What he ordered for all those other people was bad enough, but what he did to Cleve and almost did to you got me so mad...I really don't know, Honey. I wish I could say no for certain, but I can't."

"The important thing is you didn't. That's why you're still my hero." She giggled and ran into the kitchen. Dennis could hear cupboards and drawers banging as she got out the stuff while he ambled into the kitchen. Even imperfect people needed to eat.

The End

A/N: A fairly violent movie, but it was done to make a point of how methodical - how clinical - Cleve was at his job, and to establish his position as a paid commercial assassin. You just don't get over events like that after the credits roll, but sometimes it helps to come to grips with just who the heroes were.

And the whole story came about when I was having a discussion about heroes and what makes them; I figured why not take the concept and include it in a short story?